Computerized information management is critical to managing all aspects of modern information and knowledge. Individuals now must make sense of vast amounts of important information without getting lost in the clutter of irrelevant information. Computerized information management can vastly improve many aspects of life, including medical research, financial management, education, and corporate accountability. These advances in research ultimately save lives and improve human understanding so that society can meet challenges from protecting the environment to improving public health.
Collecting and comparing information across information sources has always been difficult. When working with printed material or documents, comparing content in different documents is time-consuming and error-prone, requiring taking notes, marking pages for later comparison, “cut and paste” techniques, or flipping back and forth between two (or more) sources side by side. When working on a computer, especially important in the digital age, the reader typically must scroll within a document, often losing place, and jump from window to window to compare selected content between selected sources. None of these methods gives a person fast and easy access to exactly what is wanted if the information is spread out within a single source or across a collection of sources. What is needed is a system to collect and display information that enables the user to access information on a topic and read it coherently from across documents or from different locations within a document, ideally while allowing immediate access to surrounding content that may be required for further understanding.